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Post by Moro Ashford on Jan 7, 2010 19:32:44 GMT -5
It's been four weeks since the outbreak.
First, people started getting sick. A case here, a case there; violent symptoms including fever, vomiting, and finally a coma overcame its victims. It made the side columns of the paper, a random fact on the news. An interesting development- not, however, anything to be seriously concerned about.
Then it spread. All over the country, an alarming amount of people were quarantined in hospitals, doctors watching helplessly as each succumbed to a death-like coma. News anchors began speculating, schools began closing- it was influenza, scientists claimed. A serious case of influenza, but a vaccine was on the way. To the public, they were grim but optimistic. But behind close doors, they panicked.
By now the strange virus had spread across the world, forcing its leaders underground and barring both trade and travel; an official outbreak situation had been declared. From around the globe scientists and doctors gathered to share knowledge, to somehow find the source of this disease and stem the outbreak, then find its cure. It was spreading at an impossible rate; in the depths of their comas some of the patients' skin became sickly yellow or a deep, bruising purple; their muscles deteriorated and reformed; their figures were horribly disfigured. Even in the best cases, their skin had drained of its healthy color, and they took sharp, gasping breaths.
And then they woke up.
Overnight the hospital in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona, where the first victim had been brought, was terrorized by a devastatingly violent individual who succeeded in murdering three un-infected patients in their beds and biting five nurses attempting to restrain him before being shot dead by the night guard. The nurses all became feverish and fell into the tell-tale coma by the next afternoon, thirty six hours earlier than their attacker had. This was a common trend- the more people that got sick, the shorter the span of time was between their falling ill and their comatose state.
By the early morning hours more victims had awoken, and within two days the militia was called in to restrain and quarantine hordes of violent individuals all over the country. It became clear that the virus spread through open wounds and saliva; it was now week three of the outbreak, and safe houses were being established. Most hospitals were abandoned, families fled their homes. Evacuation points were flooded with desperate survivors. And like wildfire, the infected lay claim to every major city in the United States.
Contact between countries was lost.
The army had moved on.
And everyone left behind was very much on their own.
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